COM 405: Wikileaks assignment

Your first blog assignment involves Wikileaks, the non-profit organization that is praised and condemned for revealing huge quantities of secret government documents.
Here’s the assignment:

Go to a Cable Viewer site where you can browse through some of the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. Here’s one Cable Viewer site. There are many others. You can find these sites using Google.

Browse the cables that relate to the country of your choice. Go to Google News and type Wikileaks and “Your Country.” Read a sampling of news stories that discuss Wikileaks cables related to your country.

Try to find answers to the following questions:

Roughly how many Wikileaks cables have been released that relate to your country? You can find out the number by going to the Cable Viewer and looking at how many cables have been tagged with the letters representing your country. Cables related to Mexico, for instance, are tagged MX. These include cables written in Washington, Mexico City and other locations. Cables written in Mexico City are marked Embassy Mexico. The documents that are most relevant to your country will be those written from the U.S. embassy or consulate in your country. In the case of Mexico, for instance, check those before wading into all those marked with MX tags.

What has been the reaction to leaked cables relating to your country? Have the cables created any controversy?

Do you think the cables should have been released? Please say why or why not.

Important: When filing your post, please make sure to include one of these five categories:
People, News, Features, Places or Opinion. That is because I would like to reprint your post on the St. Augustine Journal website, and if you don’t include one of those five categories, the site will not pick up your content.
Also: Please insert a photo at the top of the post.

One last request: Begin adding relevant URLs to your blogroll. Add at least three as part of this assignment. If you’re having trouble coming up with general links related to your country, you might check out these sites: